Portable computing devices (“PCDs”), such as cellular telephones and other “smart” devices, have become ubiquitous in today's society. Users rely on their PCDs for everything from communication to entertainment to retrieving data from the Internet. Indeed, for many PCD users, the PCD is their primary tool for connection to others through the digital world. Today's PCDs may be used for, among other things, telecommunications, short messaging services, social networking and email.
A very common use of PCDs involves a first user taking a picture with his PCD and then leveraging the PCD's short messaging functionality to forward the picture to a second user via a “text” message. As one of ordinary skill in the art would understand, short messaging service (“SMS”) technology may be used to route a multimedia content (e.g., a picture and/or a text-based message) from one PCD to another. The receiving PCD may be used to render the multimedia content for the benefit of its user (i.e., by displaying the content on a display component).
Currently, when a PCD receives a multimedia content, such as via a text message, the entire multimedia content may be rendered fully upon receipt. Consequently, senders of multimedia content are not presently able to dictate the manner and timing of how the multimedia content is rendered to the user of a receiving PCD. If a sender could dictate the manner and timing of how a multimedia content is rendered by a receiving device, options for communication between PCD users may be improved. Therefore, what is needed in the art is a system and method for a time-driven, fragmented display of a multimedia content.